Becoming a Museum Curator

In order to be a curator, you need to first understand the curating process in order to get the correct information and have it displayed in a way that will make it easier for readers to understand.  It is very important that as a curator you can be able to arrange the content in a layout that is understandable, and it is also very important that you have correct and authentic sources that you gathered your information from.  This analysis process is very important, because it includes a catchy title that makes readers want to continue, and also it makes sure that all information is correct and reliable.  Our museum curator project was on the textile industry, and how its advancements affected families.  We began our poster with the spinning wheel, the first producer in the textile industry. The spinning wheel was used in homes and could be operated by women, children, and elderly, and it provided families with a source of income.  After the spinning wheel was the Hand loom, or Almond loom, which increased the speed of weaving, and it was still powered by people in their homes.  However, the big changes came when the spinning jenny and power looms became prominent. These rapid producing machines were found in factories, and since families could not keep up with them, people had to move to cities to work in them in order to get money.  We came up with the title "Tearing Down Families" in order to show that while the Industrial Revolution helped advance life, it also destroyed the lives of families by preventing them from selling their own textiles, causing poverty.  We hope that viewers will be able to learn that while the Industrial Revolution was a major improvement to the lives of many, it also tore down lives with it, and forced even more industrialization.

Not only did we teach people about the textile industry, but we also learned about other parts of the Industrial Revolution, such as transportation,pollution, child labor,and cotton slavery.   Transportation was revolutionized by the creation of the steam engine, which allowed electricity and power to be created.  it also allowed the railroad to be developed, along with steam boats, which made transportation of goods and people a lot faster.  Pollution lead to many impurities in things such as water, and it also lead to very poor living conditions. The steam engine also caused black smoke to fill the skies, polluting the air and environment.   Child labor was also a huge part of the Industrial Revolution.  With the development of factories, more workers were needed, and parents sent their children to work in mills to earn money for the family. Children were also able to be paid less, so factories could end up making more money the less they paid their laborers.  Lastly, cotton slavery allowed factories to force people to work for them, and this gave them an even larger amount of money than having children work.  The cotton slaves were kept in very poor conditions, with illness constantly around. Cotton slaves worked in the cotton mills, and also harvested cotton in order to fuel the mills with material.  Becoming a museum curator for a day requires a lot of hard work, and the Industrial Revolution was an entire plethora of hard work and sacrifices by all people.

This is a picture of our project on industrialization.